Author Archives: sargosis

Misinformation regarding global warming is on the rise again

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It’s rather disappointing, but it appears as though every other month, I still come across poorly contrived stories about how “global warming is completely fake,” written by people who couldn’t pass seventh-grade earth science class.

I’d like to thank the Christian Science Monitor, for providing a rather professionally unbiased article about how a politically motivated private organization posted billboards near Chicago implying that anyone who believed in global warming was the Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski), Charles Manson, or Fidel Castro. The organization responsible for placing the billboards in the first place is the Heartland Institute, which has been known to cause false controversy regarding climate-change in the past.

I’d like to respond to a couple of statements made by the Heartland Institute (on their webpage) from a scientific perspective:

“Heartland has spent millions of dollars contributing to the real debate over climate change, and $200 for a one-day digital billboard. In return, we’ve been subjected to the most uncivil name-calling and disparagement you can possibly imagine from climate alarmists. The other side of the climate debate seems to be playing by different rules. This experiment produced further proof of that.”

As a science-oriented human being and as someone who has devoted months of research and education into the topic of climate change and global warming, I have never had to resort to publically calling someone who disagrees with my views “Charles Manson” in order to get my point across. Experiment or not, don’t pretend your organization didn’t start this mudslinging. Don’t dish out what you can’t take.

“We know that our billboard angered and disappointed many of Heartland’s friends and supporters, but we hope they understand what we were trying to do with this experiment.”

What exactly were you trying to accomplish by calling global-warming activists murderers? They’re trying to make people aware of an approaching climate crisis and prevent it from happening, thereby securing our society’s future for hundreds of years to come. Your organization is spreading misinformation for the sole temporary financial gain of few people, at the expense of billions of lives in the next fifty years…which one of you was supposed to be the “murderers” again?

“The most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are Charles Manson, a mass murderer; Fidel Castro, a tyrant; and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Global warming alarmists include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010). The leaders of the global warming movement have one thing in common: They are willing to use force and fraud to advance their fringe theory.”

This last quote is from Joseph Bast, the President of the Heartland Institute. This quote was taken right from the Heartland Institute’s website that discusses the posters they placed up. All I can say is…”wow, this guy is mixed up.”

First off, Manson never actually killed anyone. He was convicted of assisting in the planning stages of the murders, so sentence #2 is just not correct. As far as Bin Laden, I have never heard anything from him in regards to climate change. In fact, a Google search for “Bin Laden, Climate Change” only brings up news articles mentioning these ridiculous billboards, so I’m pretty sure that one’s made up too.

As for James L. Lee, he is a single event in which eco-fascism appears to be his motivation. According to Wikipedia, part of his anger stemmed from “anchor babies,” which is more conservative-based rhetoric. Perhaps if Lee was motivated by less antagonistic media, he might have chosen to merely work on having Discovery lose its advertisers, much like the coordinated effort from the left to quiet down Rush Limbaugh.

Lastly, let’s address this “use of force” comment. The complete fabrication of this statement actually makes me sick. Not only has there been a complete effort on the part of political activists to demonstrate peacefully, nearly every attempt to meet and rally in non-violent means has been met with brutal violence by various police organizations around the world.

Here are some articles about how the police in Iceland are being excessively brutal toward environmental activists.

Here is a video of police response to Iranian environmental protests.

Here is a link to an article explaining how a peaceful permitted protest in front of the white house led to 168 arrests two weeks ago. This doesn’t include the additional 54 arrests made previously in 2011 over the same issue.

Here is an example of over 300 people arrested in LA as part of the Occupy protests.

This is just the results of a fifteen minute Google search of “environmental protests, brutality.” Feel free to look everything up as I did, there are literally thousands of examples of people being arrested, beaten, injured, and killed. These are almost always peaceful protestors that are either forced by violence to leave and stop protesting.

The boot is literally on the other foot here, Mr. Bast. It is the skeptics of climate-change and the desire of their wealthy benefactors that have been the ones using excessive force and violence to get their point across. The green-movement is one of non-violence, and despite people like Bast attempting to constantly kick the teeth in of scientists, environmental activists, farmers, and ranch owners…we will continue to keep it a movement of non-violence.

Solar Power Gaining Momentum in Germany and Australia

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This week, Photon Magazine posted a newsletter about how much of an impact the solar power market is having on the price of electricity in Germany. The article is posted in German; however an English version is here. The Photon authors point out that compared to four years ago, the price of power drops dramatically during the middle of the day. In fact, the cost of electricity drops so much that it comes close to being as cheap as power at 4 A.M., when most of the country is sleeping and using very little.

The effect of such surplus power during the day can be seen in the Photon data, as the overall price of power has increased, despite the electrical load requirements of Germany remaining roughly the same. It’s apparent that the German conventional utility companies are starting to feel squeeze of their profits diminishing.

According to a different article, Australia is taking a few lessons from the German example, causing Australian utility companies to pucker in anticipation of their profits also dwindling.

New Solar Production Method Developed

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Twin Creeks, an American solar power startup company has just announced this week the successful development of a new PV-silicon module manufacturing process that may very well change the business terrain of the solar industry.

Current main-stream PV-modules use very thin wafers of crystallized silicon to collect sunlight. However, competition with integrated circuit manufacturers and high-end electronics producers that also need high-grade silicon has traditionally pushed the cost of solar modules out of the range of practicality for the average person for nearly two decades. During the wafer-cutting phase of preparing the silicon, much of the crystalline material is wasted and unused, much like the sawdust in a lumber mill. This step has always been one of the bottlenecks in making solar panels. Making the cells thinner would cause them to break too easily and the relative amount of silicon that would be ground off as dust from the saw would be too outrageous to justify the cost.

That is until now. By taking an entirely different approach to manufacturing, Twin Creeks has been able to create silicon wafers that are ten times as thin as conventional PV-cells, while at the same time eliminating the waste silicon lost as saw dust. The resultant PV-cells are just as efficient and capable as conventional silicon PV-cells, just much thinner, lighter, and also cheaper.

So what makes this process different? Rather than using a saw to create the wafers from silicon ingots, a 3-inch “puck” of silicon is placed into an industrial particle accelerator. Within this device, hydrogen atoms are fired into the top of the silicon puck, embedding themselves a few micrometers below the puck’s surface. Once infused with these new hydrogen gas atoms, the puck is then heated. This heat causes the hydrogen gas to expand quickly, forcing the thin layer of atoms above the hydrogen to separate from the rest of the crystal, creating an ultra-thin and incredibly fragile silicon wafer. This wafer is then melded to a metallic back-plate, which acts as both the structural support and the electrode of the PV-cell.

The reason this process is so groundbreaking is actually not the fact that a particle accelerator is used, but rather the fact that with this process, solar modules can produce the same amount of electricity, using one-tenth the amount of silicon as before. Since Twin Creeks is located in San Jose, California, this development has the potential to rocket the United States back to the forefront of solar-power development.

Currently, China subsidizes so much of the cost of their solar modules that the price of silicon-modules has dropped to 40% of what they were five years ago. This sudden emphasis on government-paid solar has hamstrung the American-based solar module producers, as they have typically relied on thin-film technology to make up the availability difference. Without some means of combating the slanted subsidy market in the module-manufacturing portion of the industry, it’s not impossible to see that the U.S. solar companies were on their way out. Twin Creek’s development has the potential to reverse that trend.

If the claims of Twin Creeks are correct, then they will potentially be able to produce modules at roughly 40% of the costs of contemporary Chinese silicon modules. This means that if Twin Creeks is correct, the cost of installing solar modules is about to undergo another price-drop, finally placing it below the costs of nuclear, coal, natural gas, and even wind energy.

Solar Flare Warning

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In the past three days, there have been two large Coronal Mass Ejections that are expected by many to wreak havoc on our various technologies around the world. To many, the idea of a solar flare may seem like some kind of distant and imaginary science-fiction concept, mostly because we don’t have an easy means of conveying just how intense and amazing these flares can be.

NASA currently maintains a series of satellites pointed at the sun at all times for study and events such as this. One of which, the SOHO satellite, has been transmitting images of the corona around the sun every fifteen minutes or so. The image below shows a monochrome visual picture of the sun’s atmosphere. Because it’s so much brighter, the sun itself is blocked out behind the central blue circle. The image to the left shows the sun minutes before the recent flare, while the image to the right shows the charged particles passing by the satellite hours later.

Keep in mind: this is not static interference, but actual visible ionized gas…much like an enormous neon sign passing through space. If you’d like to see the entire time-lapse animation, check out this link, which takes you to a page to see the flares unfold.

New type of Renewable Energy Invented!

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In an almost unheard-of leap of socio-economic genius, the Universal Studios Corporation has unwittingly solved the global energy crisis single-handedly. Today, March 2nd, 2012, marked the nation-wide “power-on test” of the newly created Seuss-Torque Irony-Fueled, Perpetual Motion Generator, affectionately named “LORAX” by the team’s creators.

Shown in the image above, the LORAX Generator’s mechanical layout is quite simple. It consists of a driveshaft connected to the perpetually spinning corpse of Theodor Seuss Geisel, known to the world as “Dr. Seuss.” This driveshaft is connected to a series of electric generators, similar to the way in which a hydro-electric dam works, only much, much more powerful.

Up until the concept of using a character who stood as a warning to consumerism that could devastate the environment as a mascot to peddle SUVs, disposable diapers, and a host of other green-washing products, perpetual motion was deemed “impossible” by all understandings of modern science. While it is not currently known as of the writing of this post whether the move to generate unlimited amounts of renewable energy through their marketing campaign was intentional or a fortunate accident, Universal has quickly seized the opportunity and has begun recruiting theoretical physicists from around the world toward harnessing as much power as possible from the phenomenon. While currently only in preliminary investigation stages, the new team has released the following statement:

“It is not immediately clear as to the cause for Seuss’s remains to begin such rotational movement, however, our hypothesis is that it is caused by an unbelievably intense field of localized irony. This irony-field is not only responsible for the movement, but also for the extraordinary amount of heat being released. While not visible or tangible in everyday life, under these very unique conditions, the environment was just right to set this phenomenon in motion.”

Despite a successful nation-wide debut, the LORAX Generator has also created a fair amount of public distaste and concern, citing the nausea-inducing effects being felt by many in the population. As more and more people begin to question the long-term effects of exposing ourselves to such strong levels of irony, we should keep a close eye on this as events unfold.